Domestic horses (Equus caballus) discriminate between negative and positive human nonverbal vocalisations.

ABSTRACT: The ability to discriminate between emotion in vocal signals is highly adaptive in social species. It may also be adaptive for domestic species to distinguish such signals in humans. Here we present a playback study investigating whether horses spontaneously respond in a functionally relevant way towards positive and negative emotion in human nonverbal vocalisations. We presented horses with positively- and negatively-valenced human vocalisations (laughter and growling, respectively) in the absence of all other emotional cues. Horses were found to adopt a freeze posture for significantly longer immediately after hearing negative versus positive human vocalisations, suggesting that negative voices promote vigilance behaviours and may therefore be perceived as more threatening. In support of

SUBMITTER: Smith AV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6115467 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature